Fierce and ever increasing global competition has made the business organizations and policyrnmakers turn their attention to such critical issues as productivity and quality. Productivityrnimprovement should be a concern of every industry regardless of the type of production,rneconomic or political system since there is no human activity that does not benefit fromrnimproved productivity. The common definition of productivity, the ratio of output value to inputrnvalue, remains the same for every sector. Productivity can either be improved through increasingrnthe output value by increasing the quality or quantity of products, or through decreasing the inputrnvalue by utilizing the resources effectively & efficiently.rnThe success of a productivity improvement program mainly depends on systematic identificationrnand analysis of all the factors that affect productivity of the manufacturing systems. This studyrninvestigates the factors that affect the productivity of Ethiopian manufacturing firms. Thus, thernpurpose of this paper is to find out productivity related problems with regard to both internal andrnexternal productivity factors; identify the root causes for the troubles; and propose suitablernsolutions for improvement.